This week was “Get the Hell Out of the Building” week with a focus on Customer Development. Most teams went out and started to talk to potential customers about their offerings. We had a mentor, Joel Semeniuk, come in and spend all week with the teams to work on customer development and their business model canvas. He spent a few hours with each team working on how they can go out and do customer development.

In addition angel investor Tytus Michalski came in to mentor the teams this week as well.

After hours we had a social event on Thursday. The entire cohort attended the launch party of a cohort #1 team, SurroundApp. Earlier in the day, some teams got to meet with Remi Caron, a mentor, but also the CTO of SurroundApp.

This was a lot of fun because most of cohort #1 was in attendance. When the drinking went late into the night, the cohort #1 folks started to warn cohort #2 of what happens when you come unprepared for the Friday Check in the next day. In addition as the night progressed (and the beers flowed) we had everyone come up and do their elevator pitch, even the guys from cohort #1. Always be prepared!

The team from Portugal, started to mingle with the locals.

On Friday we had our first “Friday Check In”. At this meeting we have each team do an elevator pitch and we all evaluate it as well as give pointers. The group took the constructive criticism very well. We also did a “scrum” where each team spoke about the week behind and the week ahead as well as committed to the dates of their weekly mentor email.

Lastly, each team did their 10/20/30 pitches. Yes, we do them starting on Week #2! (Now you will appreciate how much work goes into demo day!) We had two mentors in the room (Joel and Marcel) giving feedback as well as Paul and myself (and the other cohort members.)

This week we have a technical mentor coming in, a field trip visit to Makible (a HK startup building the Makibox, a $200 3-D printer), as well as some agile training (which is open to the public). The week will continue to focus on customer discovery and validation. Stay tuned…